The Bill of Rights 1698
Yeah, we do actually have one!
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In 1688, King James II and VII of England Scotland and Ireland was summarily ejected from his throne as his army melted away before a force of 20 000 led by his nephew and son-in-law William, Prince of Orange. James had been a troublesome monarch, with absolutist tendencies and a devotion to the Roman Catholic Curch which sat ill with the people of Protestant England. The proximate cause of this ‘Glorious Revolution’ was James’ attempt to charge seven Church of England Bishops with ‘seditious libel’ for refusing to read his Declaration of Indulgence to their congregations. The seven bishops were acquitted, and the subsequent anti-Catholic rioting showed that James had lost all authority and the trust of his people. A more important, but less ‘official’ reason was the birth of a legitimate heir to James in the person of James Francis Edward Stuart (later known as the ‘Old Pretender’) and the consequent fear among the nobility of a Catholic dynasty.
William was not only the Kings’ nephew, but was also the husband of the Kings’ eldest daughter, Mary. Until the birth of her half-brother, the Protestant Mary had been heir presumptive, so her accession as joint ruler with her husband made the whole thing legitimate.
However, Parliament was not about to leave the country open to more instability or conflict between itself and the monarch. So in 1689, they met to draw up a Declaration of Rights, laying out those rights, freedoms and laws that James was deemed to have broken, and the conditions under which Willam and Mary were to assume the throne. It eventually took the form of a list of thirteen grievances against James and a further list of thirteen clauses limiting the authority of the monarch. These were read out to William and Mary, who accepted them and were afterwards proclaimed King and Queen. The Declaration itself was enacted into law as the Bill of Rights. Here it is.
The 13 Grievances
Whereas the late King James the Second, by the assistance of divers evil counsellors, judges and ministers employed by him, did endeavour to subvert and extirpate the Protestant religion and the laws and liberties of this kingdom…
- By assuming and exercising a power of dispensing with and suspending of laws and…
